Healing Drum Society still mum on cuts
Circumstances of close to $1 million in cuts remain a mystery
Cody Punter
Northern News Services
Published Friday, April 25 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Just over two weeks after it was reported the Healing Drum Society would be losing a large portion of its funding due to cuts from federal and territorial governments, the circumstances that lead to the cuts remain murky. The future of the society is equally mysterious.
Yellowknifer has been unable to reach Healing Drum's board members or its new executive director, despite repeated phone calls and e-mails to its office. The society's website has been offline as of April 16.
Meanwhile, both the feds and the GNWT maintained that their recent decision to cancel their contracts with the society at the beginning of April was made at the society's request.
According to Judith Gadbois-St-Cyr, a spokesperson for Health Canada, the federal government cut all of its $734,090 worth of funding to the society after the NGO informed the government that it no longer had the "capacity to support" the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program.
The program provides support and counselling to survivors seeking compensation from the government as a result of abuse suffered while at residential school.
Over the past 12 years, the Healing Drum Society received a total of $5.39 million from Health Canada to deliver the programming.
The GNWT offered similar reasons for cutting the final year of funding to the Department of Justice's three-year $700,000 Wek'eahkaa Healing Program pilot project, which offered counselling to men with a history of domestic violence.
Adrien Barrieau, acting director of community justice and policing with the GNWT, told Yellowknifer that Diane Hristic, acting executive director of the society up until recently, confirmed that it would be unable to continue providing its services on March 20.
"It became apparent that their staff was no longer there," said Barrieau, who declined to elaborate on the nature of internal issues faced by the society.
"That's when we (the GNWT) made the decision to terminate the contract, and the contract was terminated on April 9."
Yellowknifer spoke with David Poitras, who joined the Healing Drum Society's board of directors after being elected as its chair last December. He resigned just two weeks after he took the position.
He said the reason he left after such a short period of time is because there was a toxic rift between the society's staff and its board.
"I just realized it was in such a mess. There were so many personality conflicts," he said. "I just didn't want to spend the energy to try and fix that up."
Poitras resigned just before the society's former executive director, Joe Pintarics, was fired by the board.
He said Pintarics' role with the society was raised at his first board meeting, but he refused to comment on the nature of the discussions as they were conducted behind closed doors.
Pintarics, who has since been hired as the executive director of the Rae Edzo Friendship Centre, said that it would be "inadvisable to comment" on the circumstances of his firing.
"At the end of the day, the only thing I care about is that those services to residential school survivors are reestablished," he said.
Yellowknifer asked Pintarics whether it was possible that the expiration of $1 million in federal government subsidies last December - which were filtered through the Aboriginal Healing Foundation - may have impacted the society's ability to deliver its programs.
Although six employees were let go as a result of the expiring funding, Pintarics said the society had ample time to prepare for those cuts as it was aware funding would be running out more than two years in advance.
While Pintarics was always looking for new ways to raise money, he said he did not anticipate the society would no longer be able to fulfill its duties to its clients at the time he was fired.
Barrieau said the GNWT plans to conduct a full review of the first two years of its pilot project before issuing another request for proposals to continue running the men's healing program.
Health Canada is also in the process of identifying an alternate organization to deliver its Indian Residential Schools programming, for which funding remains available.
It is hoped a new funding recipient will be identified by next month.
